Leaders resist wage compromise

The small number of senators who are open to compromise on a minimum wage hike are facing stiff resistance: their own party’s leadership.

On the Democratic side, moderates like West Virginia’s Joe Manchin and those facing reelection like Mark Begich of Alaska are open to finding a middle ground with Republicans. But they are up against Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and his leadership team, who are refusing to entertain any wage increase below their party’s target of $10.10 per hour.

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A similar dynamic is unfolding on the GOP side where lawmakers like Bob Corker of Tennessee are willing to at least open debate on the plan. But he’s not finding a receptive audience from GOP leaders, who are signaling they are prepared to block the measure from even coming to the floor.

“I can’t imagine not wanting to debate the best way to improve wages in America,” Corker said in an interview.

Top Republicans, however, said blocking a minimum wage bill is the best way to telegraph the party’s frustration with the Democratic-led Senate’s priorities.

“It seems to me at least that if we have the votes on the procedural vote to stop it, that that’s probably the best way to try to at least express our disappointment and objections to the way things are being done,” said John Thune of South Dakota, the No. 3 in GOP leadership. “[Democrats] want the issue; I don’t think they want a solution anyway.”

President Barack Obama has made a minimum wage hike a top election-year priority as Democrats try to focus voter attention on economic inequalities and away from the health care law. But the intra-party debate demonstrates just how tough that task will be to achieve.

Under a plan developed by Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), the minimum wage would increase incrementally from $7.25 per hour to $10.10 per hour over a three-year time frame and rise gradually after that with inflation. The bill would also gradually raise the wage for tipped workers, who have been paid an hourly rate of $2.13 since 1991. It will likely not be taken up until after this month’s Easter recess.

On the Republican side, Susan Collins of Maine is quietly working with a group of Democrats and Republicans — who she refuses to name — to build a bipartisan proposal that can appeal to centrists in both parties. Collins wants a lower wage linked with small-business tax breaks and even a redefinition of a full-time workweek under Obamacare to 40 hours per week.

“It may well be that we have to go through demonstrating that the votes are not there for $10.10, which they’re clearly not in either the Senate or much less the House,” Collins said Thursday. So maybe that’s the way it will play out. That’s really up to Sen. Reid whether he wants to bring a bill to the floor that he knows isn’t going to succeed or whether he wants to try to achieve a bill that could pass.”

Democrats say that $10.10 is the appropriate level to set wages in order to lift nearly 1 million workers out of poverty, but Republicans point to a study showing that such an increase could cost 500,000 jobs.

Even some of the Senate’s Republican deal makers on an extension of expired unemployment insurance benefits said they will oppose opening debate on the minimum wage, including Sens. Mark Kirk of Illinois, Dean Heller of Nevada and Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire.

But there are political reasons on both sides for refusing to compromise. Many Republicans, who philosophically oppose the minimum wage, would rather just take one unpopular vote now — and litigate the rest of the election year over more politically palatable fights over Obamacare — rather than engage in a protracted fight over workers’ income.

Corker said he didn’t know if he’d support an increase in the minimum wage and is generally skeptical of government intervention in the workplace. But, he said, the two parties should at least engage in a debate over the issue.

“Especially now with the kind of economic slowness that we have — whether you support raising the minimum wage or not, I can’t imagine not being open to debating the issue,” Corker said.